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Victoria Belfrey
Victoria Belfrey, also known as Rapunzel, is a character on ABC's Once Upon a Time. She débuts in the first episode of the seventh season. She is portrayed by starring cast member Gabrielle Anwar, and is the cursed counterpart of Rapunzel Tremaine. History The day before Roni will sign her bar over to Victoria, Lucy is also supposed to come visit her grandmother but is late because she sneaked out to find Henry, her father. As Victoria arrives at Belfrey Towers, Ivy, her daughter and personal assistant, updates her on this development and promises to try to find Lucy, to which Victoria responds by telling her to stop trying and start succeeding. She then heads to Roni's, where Jacinda is returning Henry's laptop to him after Lucy stole it, and reprimands Jacinda for day drinking, reminding her that that is how she ended up with Lucy in the first place. Victoria informs Jacinda that she will be taking full custody of Lucy, much to her stepdaughter's dismay. After Jacinda storms out, Henry remarks to Victoria that he understands why Lucy thinks Jacinda is Cinderella, insulting Victoria. Jacinda decides to run away with Lucy, so Victoria plots to stop them, heading to the police station and ordering Officer Rogers to help her. Henry, whose car was stolen, overhears her demands and realizes where Jacinda must be. Victoria persuades him to tell her, promising that she wants what is best for Lucy and Jacinda and that she will help him find his car if he helps her. Henry reveals that Jacinda wants to live on Bainbridge Island with Lucy and Victoria sends Rogers and Ivy to retrieve them. Because of Rogers' success in helping her, Victoria puts a good word about Rogers at the station, causing him to be promoted to Detective. Later, Victoria arrives at Roni's bar to watch Roni sign the bar over, but Roni changes her mind, having been inspired by Jacinda's attempts to stand up to Victoria. Victoria is forced to listen as Roni expresses hope in the future and that she considers the bar her home before she tears up the contract. Infuriated, she swears that Roni will regret her decision, but the bar owner responds that regret isn't really her thing and watches as Victoria storms out. At some point after losing Lucy, Jacinda faces a custody case against Victoria, who convinces her not to fight her or she will lose. Jacinda, too afraid of this coming true, does not pursue the case, effectively forfeiting her daughter to Victoria. Upon coming out of her office from a business meeting, Victoria is met by Jacinda, who just found out that Lucy's recital has become a charity event with an admission ticket costing $550. Jacinda begs her stepmother to be lenient, both because her paycheck won't cover the cost and that she is trying her best to get her life in order, but Victoria coldly tells her that second chances are earned, not given. Later, Victoria receives a bouquet of hyacinths along with an accompanying card from Lucy who tells her about the flowers blooming in the old community garden. She tasks Detectives Weaver and Rogers with driving Henry out of Hyperion Heights, however, after Henry ends up helping Jacinda secure a job at the charity event so she can see Lucy, Victoria demands that they do something to make him go away even if it means incriminating him on false charges. Rogers seemingly carries out an order from Weaver to implicate Henry for theft by slipping Victoria's bracelet into his apron, but Henry is exonerated when he reveals his pocket only has as keychain in it, proving Rogers disobeyed Weaver. At her office, Victoria openly criticizes Weaver for his failure to do what she asked, while Weaver expresses little care for her reprimand, stating that she neither owns or controls him and that while their goals have aligned in the past, they won't always. After Weaver walks out, Victoria is left to stew over his defiance of her. Under the pretense of demolishing the old garden and build new condos in its place, Victoria's real motive is to unearth the ground beneath it and retrieve her younger daughter Anastasia's preserved body. She learns about Lucy and Jacinda secretly exchanging letters by leaving them for each other in the wishing well, and on the same day the garden is to be decimated, she arrives at the location with the demolition team and catches Jacinda in the midst of dropping off a letter. Jacinda asks her to reconsider for Lucy's sake, but Victoria insists it's too late and simply tells her to leave or risk being buried alive. As Jacinda is collecting signatures for a petition to save the garden, Victoria promises her a tempting deal: a newly built condo for her and Lucy if she burns the petitions. Lucy, witnessing what her mother has done, protests that she would rather be apart from her than together if Jacinda is going to give up. While Jacinda is heartbroken at her daughter's reaction, Victoria barely conceals a smile at the dispute. That night, after regaining the coffin with Anastasia's body in it, Victoria takes it with her to the top floor inside Belfrey Towers, where she visits an imprisoned witch. She wants the woman's help with enacting her plans of making Lucy surrender her belief willingly as a way to resurrect Anastasia, but the witch refuses despite the latter's attempt at intimidating her. The witch cautions that Victoria may succeed in breaking Lucy's belief and reviving her daughter, but she will still have to deal with her afterward. After Victoria gets into her car, she is spooked when Tilly pops up from the backseat and asks her whether it's better to be feared than loved. Victoria questions who she is, but Tilly has her own question for her, inquiring about how she and everyone else got to Hyperion Heights. Tilly then drops the question altogether and becomes interested in who Victoria is under her "mask", before reaching as if to pull the woman's face away, but Victoria pepper sprays her to force her out of the car. In the bag Tilly leaves behind, Victoria finds Weaver's business card, indicating that she is one of the detective's informants, as well as a bottle of pill medication that Tilly has stopped taking recently. She pressures Weaver to persuade Tilly into taking the pills to restabilize herself before she becomes too dangerous, but Weaver is reluctant since her request doesn't align with his interests. Seeing as Weaver doesn't want to do it, Victoria implies that she can expose his many corruptive deeds and earn him a place in prison. Weaver warns her against threatening him, though she expresses no qualms about doing so and pushes him to choose who he'd rather go down: him or Tilly. Victoria later pays a visit to Weaver at the hospital, where he is recovering after being shot by Tilly. She is disappointed to learn he has let Tilly go, to which Weaver explains having gotten Tilly to resume taking her pills and thus she is no longer a public menace. When Victoria challenges him by reminding him she has evidence to expose his corruption, Weaver hints he found something else more important than that and purposely ends his sentence by calling her "dearie", which indicates he remembers himself now. Victoria questions him further about what he found, though Weaver only cautions her to choose her next step wisely as anything she does to him will no longer harm him. Having more difficulty than she expected with breaking Lucy's belief, Victoria visits the Witch again and tries to bribe her with tea in exchange for information. The Witch suggests Victoria is looking at things the wrong way because belief can only be removed if it's severed at the root, but she refuses to give any more specifics unless Victoria provides her with her "special tea". After this meeting, Victoria sends Ivy to pick up some herbs, all the while remaining secretive about what she needs them for. She also informs Sabine that she is increasing her rent by 8% and nonchalantly suggests it's a family discount, to which an annoyed Sabine declares her intent to fight back and not be intimidated by her. Ivy returns with the procured herbs, but when she expresses curiosity about where her mother is headed, Victoria cautions her to stop both her questions and complaining and start doing her job before she decides to hire another assistant to take her place. Victoria then goes to see the Witch at the top floor, but while she is still in the elevator, Ivy uses the security camera to spy on her and then phones Henry to tell him she has a lead on her mother's schemes. Learning that Sabine's beignets are earning her a lot of money, Victoria samples one of the tasty pastries before calling one of her associates, Ralph, to wreck the business. Although Ralph successfully causes a fire to burn everything, Rogers investigates the incident and tells Sabine of his suspicions that Victoria is behind it. That night, Ivy comes to her mother's office offering to help her in any way as she seems to have had a bad day. Victoria dryly remarks on her kind gesture and talks about the dream of guiding and caring for a daughter who she could lean on in the same way someday, however, she laments that not all daughters are created equal and Ivy would do best to realize just how badly she is failing right now and that she will continue to fail. Seemingly without Victoria's knowledge, Ivy visits the Witch, whom she is in a secret alliance with and boasts to her about having fooled her mother thus far. In her office, Victoria is nursing a migraine when Ivy comes in to check up on her. She suggests the cause may be artificial sugar that Ivy put in her coffee, but her daughter assures her she always puts the real kind in. Ivy ponders if the pollen in the hyacinth flowers in the office are the reason and offers to take them away, with Victoria consenting to the suggestion if it'll stop her from hearing her grating voice. As Victoria scolds her granddaughter for sneaking out into town without her permission, Lucy expresses little care about getting caught, to which an enraged Victoria grounds her by sending her to her room. Lucy defiantly tells her grandmother that she can punish her now, however, when her parents break the curse and her family is reunited, Victoria will be the one left all alone. Afterwards, Victoria brings tea to the Witch again, during which she admits Lucy is still stubbornly clinging to her belief though she is sure she can wear the girl down in time. She then notices a speck of dirt on the ground and begins to suspect the Witch has an ally. Victoria checks footage from the elevator security camera, which shows someone wearing black pumps exiting the floor where the Witch is being kept but the screen goes to static, obscuring her from seeing the person's face. Going by a hunch, Victoria goes to Ivy's work desk and fishes around under it until she discovers a pair of heels that match the ones she saw. Weaver arrives to tell her that Rogers is dangerously close to solving the Eloise Gardener case. In turn, she pushes him to take care of the situation or she'll find someone who will do it in a more permanent fashion. Victoria confronts the Witch for pretending to help her this whole time and demands to know when she woke Drizella up. The Witch admits Drizella has always been awake and reveals her daughter wishes to make her suffer. reminds her of the true nature of the ivy plant, which can't grow unless it clings to something else, namely the Witch, and vows to bring her down so Ivy will have no one left to rely on. After Victoria has moved the Witch to another building, she is cornered by Rogers, who handcuffs her to a railing while he busts open a nearby closet and rescues the Witch, who claims to be Eloise. During Victoria's arrest, she is led by police officers to a cruiser, where Ivy feigns sadness over her mother's situation before smugly taunting her for being a prisoner while the Witch is free. As Victoria is placed in the police car, she angrily denounces her daughter for unleashing someone who is more dangerous than she can fathom. Ivy, not taking her advice seriously, simply smirks at her mother's downfall. With Victoria in jail and unable to act as Lucy's legal guardian, the child is later taken in by social services. In the prison visiting room, Ivy unsuccessfully tries to intimidate Victoria into revealing Anastasia's whereabouts. The two trade terse words, with Ivy expressing resentment for her favoritism towards Anastasia and Victoria mocking Ivy for not getting enough hugs from her. After Ivy leaves, Weaver prepares to recuff Victoria and return her to her holding cell. Victoria, with other plans in mind, tries to entice him into a deal by mentioning his prolificacy for collecting things, the wife he is separated from, and the dagger he has. She then questions him on how his search for the Guardian is going and agrees to give him all the necessary information if he helps her with reviving Anastasia. Weaver steps forward, seemingly to recuff her, but instead reattaches it on his belt as he tells her that the deal is on. Once Weaver has gotten the judge to drop the charges because Rogers didn't have a warrant, Victoria walks out of the station, where Rogers has a brief confrontation with Weaver before the latter joins Victoria in her car. Armed with paperwork from the custody case, Victoria shows up at Jacinda's apartment to formally relinquish Lucy to her. She explains she had been testing Jacinda at the time she had challenged her in the custody battle all those years ago hoping she would fight back, but Jacinda had not. However, Victoria is pleased Jacinda got Nick's help with regaining Lucy and persuades her stepdaughter that being locked up has made her realize Lucy belongs with her mother. For the next stop, Victoria leads Weaver into a mausoleum, and despite knowing they are being tailed by Ivy, she ignores her. She retrieves a bag from one pullout slot, which contains the storybook that will reunite with Anastasia. Weaver shares his experience of having a son who thought as little of him as Ivy does of Victoria but he never stopped trying to fix things with him. Victoria dryly congratulates him for that before chiding him for comparing his grief to hers as he has no idea what she's been through, however, Weaver asserts he does because he's known the longing for reunion and paid the cost for it. In turn, Victoria refuses to stop now that she has a way and states dispassionately that Ivy hasn't been her daughter for a long time. Weaver asks for his end of their deal now that he's helped her, but she tells him he'll get it after Anastasia is back. Victoria allows Lucy to read her story from the book before bringing her to see a comatose Anastasia. She attempts to open Lucy's eyes to the reality of this fairytale, as she once sacrificed everything for her family and did not get a happy ending, but Lucy insists people can if they work for it and stubbornly believes she and her parents will get that in the end. Victoria shatters these hopes by playing a video of Jacinda and Nick kissing to prove Henry means nothing to her mother, especially since Henry has already left town and that no matter how hard Lucy believes, her dream of a reunited family won't happen. As Lucy sheds tears of grief and lets go of her belief, one of her tears fall onto the storybook, which Victoria collects and drips onto Anastasia's body, resurrecting her, while elsewhere in Hyperion Heights, Lucy collapses in Jacinda's arms. }} Family ---- Trivia Production Notes= Production Notes *According to Gabrielle Anwar, Victoria is Lady Tremaine but in a contemporary world. She also added that "she's still using the same chronic manipulations and desperately unkind puppeteering of her stepchild in the shape of materialism and physical control of her life and her daughter's life".http://ew.com/tv/2017/10/02/once-upon-time-gabrielle-anwar-lady-tremaine/ |-|Cultural References= Disney *When Victoria finds out about Jacinda and Sabine's pop-up beignet shop, she calls an unseen character named Ralph and tells him to "wreck it", a reference to the film Wreck-It Ralph. Popular Culture *The scene where Victoria enters the Belfrey Towers in "Hyperion Heights" is a homage to the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada, in which Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly enters the Runway building in a similar way. **Glenn Close's Cruella DeVil has a similar scene and entrance in the live-action film 101 Dalmatians. Appearances See also *Belfrey Towers References fr:Victoria Belfrey nl:Boze Stiefmoeder Category:Female Characters Category:Season Seven Characters Category:Once Upon a Time Characters